Politics

Rep. Tim Scott: Dems should look inward on ‘racist’ charges [VIDEO]

Nicholas Ballasy Senior Video Reporter
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South Carolina Republican Rep. Tim Scott said Democrats who have suggested that Newt Gingrich appealed to a racist “element” of the GOP to win the South Carolina presidential primary should look within their own party and “talk about Senator Byrd who was a member of the Klan.”

“I mean the bottom line is, when you try to create a racist faction in either party, you have to start with the Democratic Party and talk about Senator Byrd who was a member of the Klan. So to have a conversation about a racist faction of anything sounds like only race-baiting from the other side,” Scott told the Daily Caller after appearing at the Conservative Black Forum on Capitol Hill.

South Carolina Democratic Rep. James Clyburn told CNN that Gingrich appealed to a racist “element”of the Republican Party in his state’s GOP presidential primary by calling Obama the “food stamp president.”

“There’s only one thing that makes him different from all the other president’s that we’ve had,” Clyburn hinted.

Rev. Al Sharpton made similar remarks about Gingrich.

“We cannot take out of the analysis, the polarizing tone that Newt Gingrich used in South Carolina. And I think what is going to be something to watch, he outright race-baited and I’m not bringing up race, he did,” he said.

Former Oklahoma Republican Rep. J.C. Watts responded to Clyburn’s claim, saying, “The fact is you’ve got more white people on food stamps than you have black folks on food stamps and the fact is we’ve had more food stamps supplied for and given over the last three years because the policies that we rolled out in terms of trying to create jobs just doesn’t do that.”

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